Stargazer
by Simoun Sibylla
Summary: As long as she could remember, Physis had looked to the stars and heard the song of Terra. This story briefly traces Physis's life from the time Blue finds her all the way to the era of Soldier Tony.
1. Birth

**Part 1:**

**Birth**

She looked to the stars. Always to the stars.

As long as she could remember, she had seen them. They appeared in her dreams, coalescing into a glowing mass that enveloped her in a warm, gentle light as she slept. When she awoke, she would reach out to touch them, but they would scatter before her, darting to the distant corners of the darkness surrounding her. They shown brightly there in the field of black, as if beckoning her to chase after them.

She always accepted their invitation gladly. She knew their game. They would make her run from one pinprick of light to another, over and over, but somehow she would always find her way to that one special star that was her favorite of them all.

It shown a pale blue, and it sang to her.

She would linger near it, quietly rejoicing as her heart filled with song. She could listen to it forever and never tire of its sweet voice.

Sometimes, though, she heard other voices. They sounded distant and cold, but they never interrupted her game for long. As soon as the intruding voices faded, she would turn her attention back to her stars.

Then one day, she heard a new voice. It echoed in her head like nothing ever had before. It made her heart beat faster.

At the sound of the voice, the stars trembled in the darkness.

_Who are you? _she asked and realized for the first time that she, too, had a voice.

_Blue._

_Blue?_

He laughed and said, _Put your hand over mine._

The stars flickered, then vanished from sight. In their place, she could see a sea of blue. Startled, she backed away. Swarms of bubbles floated up past her.

She had never seen such things before. All she had known was the dark playground of the stars.

_Over here, _he said.

Beyond the veil of watery blue, she saw his face and knew that it belonged to the source of that voice. His eyes exuded a warmth like that of glowing red stars.

She drifted closer to him and reached out a hand to press it against his palm, but instead she found a cold, hard barrier between them. She pulled back, confused, but when he did not move his hand away, she placed her palm against the glass again.

_Will you show me what you were looking at before? _he asked. _Let me see your Terra again._

_Terra? _she echoed, confused. For a moment, she thought she caught a glimpse of a blue-white sphere, but it faded almost immediately. Still, the image reminded her distinctly of her own special blue star. So she pushed away the view of the face in front of her and instead cast about in the familiar darkness, summoning her stars. They shyly gathered around her and slowly returned to their normal positions.

Hopping from one star to another, she flew through their maze until she finally reached her goal: the small, blue speck of light that always circled a nearby golden star, singing its comforting song.

_Terra, _she said, pleased with herself.

_Terra, _he repeated, and the sound of his voice made the stars around her flare up with an almost painful brightness. The image of the blue star faded away slowly, until all she could see was his face, tinted blue by the liquid separating them.

He smiled, his hand still pressed against the glass, and for the first time in her life, she felt her own lips curve up into a smile.


	2. Paradise

**Part 2:**

**Paradise**

Her favorite place was the planetarium. From the first day she had come aboard the Mu ship, she had felt most comfortable here in this marble observatory. The noise—verbal, telepathic, and emotional—of all the people crowded aboard this vessel drained her, so she fled here to bask in the mechanical silence of the enormous telescope.

Whenever night fell, she would sit quietly and enjoy the nearness of the stars. She could not see them directly with her blind eyes, but she could sense their presence and view them with her mind's eye, as she did with any other object.

Somewhere out there was that bright blue planet she saw in her dreams with the vividness and detachment of a childhood memory. Sometimes, when her evening contemplation gave way to a deeper meditation, she thought she could hear a faint melody drifting down from the heavens. It filled her with an unfathomable longing to leave this place and seek out that precious blue light, that strangely familiar yet foreign world ingrained in her heart.

But even that beautiful planet paled next to the one star her blind eyes always followed, day and night.

He did not know it, but in her mind, he always shone a silvery blue. He gleamed like honed steel, cold and hard, but there were shades of a darker, velvety blue here and there in his shadows. She could see his strength and unbending determination, yet she knew of his soft affection and secret loneliness. He was kind, and he was powerful—and she loved him.

Soldier Blue would visit her each day, though never at any regular time. Sometimes he would catch her gazing at the stars in the evening and ask her what she saw there; other times he would request that she consult her tarot cards for him. Often he would simply pace about the hall or stand near her as he spoke of the issues weighing on his mind, but on occasion he would simply ask to sit quietly beside her for a little while.

She would gladly do anything he asked of her.

As he sat beside her on the marble stairway with his head resting against her shoulder, he murmured, "Won't you show me your Terra again?"

Their hands touched, and their minds naturally harmonized themselves so that he could look inside her as easily as though her mind were his own. Feeling his presence, her heart fluttered even after all these years, but she calmed herself by focusing on the image of the blue planet that was the home of their ancestors.

"Can you see it, Soldier?"

"Ah, yes." His breath was soft against her neck. "As always, your heart is beautiful, my goddess."

"If it is, then only because you gave it to me when you saved my life."

"No, Physis. You were already beautiful when I found you, long ago."

They stayed together like that a moment longer before he sighed and said, "Physis, will we ever be able to go to Terra?" Weariness weighed heavily in his voice.

She felt his mind pull away and resisted the urge to pull him back. Instead, she squeezed his hand tighter. "Someday, Soldier," she said gently but with conviction. "Someday we will go to Terra."

She knew with absolute certainty that they would reach that beloved blue planet someday—but she could not yet say whether they would get there in this life or the next.

The road ahead was long.


	3. Death

**Part 3:**

**Death**

She knelt on the floor as tears streamed down her face. All around her the familiar song of the blue planet played, though its pitch was wild and its tones keening. The melody was distorted by pain and despair, but she recognized it as the song of the planet she had dreamed of these many, many years.

She had not heard that song since Nazca, that red jewel of a planet she had chosen from among the many stars and given a name, in the same way Blue had found her and made her who she was.

The tragic death of the planet had robbed her of Blue, and with him went her visions of the stars and song of their lost home, Terra.

But now she could feel Terra shrieking in her death throes.

In the depths of the planet, before the Elders had teleported her to safety, the cries of the weak, minuscule beings—Human and Mu alike—had torn at her ears, blending with the mournful dirge of the planet itself. It was Nazca all over again. The tired red planet had screamed in rage as the weapons carved it up, and the voices of the dying had cut through the hearts of all the Mu.

Now she could feel how Terra wept for her prodigal children, newly returned but none the wiser for their exile.

_This is not the way we wanted it to end, Soldier, _she thought, before wondering if she had wanted to address Blue or Jomy—or both.

So many people had gone and left her.

She would give anything to return to those raucous days on the ship, with Jomy and Blue, Alfred and Leo, the Captain and Zel, even Tony and the other children whose very existence had continually burned her with searing guilt and shame after the flames of Nazca.

She thought now that if she could go back to that time, she would not have withdrawn herself as much as she had. But all she had seen was Blue, even as he lay in coma, and after his death, she had retreated to her slowly returning memories of him, clinging to the last gift he had given her. He was a part of her, and she a part of him, as it had always been.

And as always, Terra called out to her.

Hands reached for her, clung to her dress, and grasped at her arms. They belonged to the children that had come with her—the children raised on Terra, who knew nothing of the stars.

She bowed her head and held out her hands to them. For so long the Mu had fled from one place to another, seeking a peaceful place to live. For so long the Mu and the Humans alike had dreamed of this planet they both called home. Yet now Terra cast all of them away again.. They could not stay here.

"Where are we going?" asked a child.

"To a pure land," said Physis, unable to stop the tears.

They could not stay here.

Perhaps Terra would never let them come back again, either.

She drew the children close and wept.


	4. Peace

**Part 4:**

**Peace**

She was back among the stars now, but her inner sight was drawn not to the pale lights beyond the hull of the ship. Instead, she found herself captivated by the children.

At first there had been the handful Human children rescued from the depths of Terra herself, and then there had been the countless refugees collected from the ships and colonies throughout Human territory. Soldiers and civilians, young and old, telepath or non-telepath—the old distinctions mattered little as all people fled the chaos left in the wake of the collapsed Superior Dominant system. In some places there was violence and despair, but in others, Human and Mu clung together, seeking shelter and safety. The Shangri-la took in as many people as it could possibly hold.

The haphazard alliance between the Human and Mu factions was fragile and tenuous in the weeks and months after the second loss of Terra, but she watched in silence as the heavy weight of grief and responsibility slowly forged a bond between both sides.

The Human named Serge met often with Soldier Tony, and with cautious delight, Physis saw them grow into their role as ambassadors and negotiators. Agreements were made; crises were overcome, if not averted. She could see that Tony, tempered by loss, was a child no more.

She found she feared him less than she had when he had been a boy, but still, she kept her distance. He was different from Jomy, who had sought her affection like a child longing for his mother, and he would never be like Blue.

No one would ever be like Blue again.

Still, she prayed that the souls of the two former Soldiers would guide the young leaders on both sides.

While many people stayed on the planets, moons, and stations they had inhabited for so long in order to rebuild their lives without the control of the computers, the Shangri-la joined a fleet of ships bound for a new planet to make their home, free of all lingering restraints of the destroyed S.D. System.

The journey was long; children were born among the passengers before they even came near their destination. Some of the babies were born of Mu parents, and others came from Human couples, but more and more, the families were mixed and the remaining distinctions blurred. They were all in this together, now.

_If only you both were here to see this, _she thought wistfully, as she heard the children playing in the park below where she stood with her hand pressed against the windowpane. The Soldiers would have been delighted at how easily they got along, at how those with psionic abilities shared their powers with those who lacked them simply with the touch of a hand or a frankly projected thought.

She lingered by the window, observing them, but eventually the shouts and laughter of the children died down. A moment later a faint melody reached her ears. They had joined hands and formed a circle, singing a song as they raced round and round, tugging at each other. They were playing a new game, trying to go faster and faster in circles without falling down. Their song grew louder.

A gasp escaped Physis's lips as she recognized the tune.

It was the song she had heard from the moment she was formed in a lifesupport tank in Artemisia. It was the song that Blue said had led him to her, hidden away though she had been in a secret government laboratory. She had encountered the same song in the heart of the man who killed Blue—and it was the same song she had heard Terra cry as that man, too, had finally passed away.

Many, many years after she thought she had forgotten it, the song of Terra had returned to her.

Very softly, the strains of the melody began to echo in her heart, and in her mind, she saw the children's circle dance become the movement of the stars, spinning together in the delicate dance of a galaxy.

The stars had returned, as well.

Among the glowing, dense galactic mass, she spotted a beautiful golden star with a gleaming blue planet orbiting around it. The pair of lights filled her with nostalgia and an almost heart-breaking longing—

She leaned against the window and clutched a hand over her mouth as she recognized them. That powerful, irresistible star radiating golden sunlight and that peaceful, faithfully spinning blue orb captured in its gravity—she knew them both. She knew their names.

_Jomy. Blue._

They were there, among the children, though they did not know themselves in this new lifetime they had only just begun.

But Physis knew with utter certainty now that someday—some distant, faraway day—they would all go back to Terra, together.


End file.
